DVD Review: “No End in Sight”

 No End in Sight, directed by Charles Ferguson, USA, 2007. Review by Julian on 1/26/08.

Every year, around the time they wheel out the Oscar nominations, I realize I need to get my ass moving and start checking out the films that slipped through the cracks. With most of 2007 spent in Pittsburgh—not the single greatest city in the country when it comes to film availability—the list would be even longer than usual if  the year hadn’t presented such a dearth of quality cinema. Nevertheless, I’ll be raiding Netflix to check out all the nominees I haven’t seen so far. This way, when they announce the winners, I won’t just guess that the wrong nominee won: I’ll know that the wrong nominee won. 

(This is assuming, of course, that the best prospective entrant in a given category was nominated at all.  Which it probably wasn’t.)

Scanning the list of nominees for a good start, I decided to check out No End in Sight, a documentary tracing the colossal series of errors committed by the United States government in its occupation of Iraq. It was a good choice. The film offers a measured and informative narrative, presenting a wide variety of qualified perspectives on an issue the media often covers but rarely considers with anything resembling critical thought. Talking heads include assistants to Colin Powell and the UN’s Special Representative in Iraq, major administrative players in the initial recovery effort, and members of the military who saw the story from the ground.

Beginning with Bush’s infamous declaration of victory in May of 2003, the film goes on to show how the process of rebuilding and governing Iraq was hopelessly and tragically mismanaged. With the exception of hopeless boob Walter Slocombe, whose bad  hair cut and witless stammering admittedly lend his pleas of ignorance a bit of credence, everybody here knows that the US messed up big. While the film is packed end to end with a pretty staggering litany of blunders, I’ll give a personal shout out to L Paul Bremer, who as Director of Reconstruction decided it would be a good idea to disband the entire Iraqi Army. Instead of having a ready-made force familiar with the local terrain  at his disposal, he created a group of angry desperate enemies a solid half million strong.

Certain critics will contend that the film represents the traditional biases of the liberal media, but just about everything presented here is unequivocal fact. Actually, that may be one of the ways the myth of the liberal media arose in the first place: the facts themselves seem to have an awfully liberal bias. When you’re dealing with the kind of shortsighted greed and arrogance on display here, there’s only so many ways the cards can fall.

No End in Sight covers a relatively narrow time frame, tending to focus on the early period of occupation at the expense of the politics involved before and after. Whether that’s a weakness depends on what you’re looking for; a plethora of existing documentaries cover the country’s motivation for entry (see Fahrenheit 9/11 as a provacative start), while current developments seem to be mere echoes of the mistakes, complaints, and disengenuous statements of progress we’ve seen in the past.

Amid the hand-wringing, political sniping, and anomie of today’s society, a film like this one won’t exactly energize the oversaturated apathetic masses. And while it may not change the world, it will at least serve as a vital historical document for the generations to come. I don’t have too much faith in us learning from the past, but at least I can look forward to No End in Sight Two: Down and Out in Iran.

 Rating: 3.5 screens out of 5